Since his death almost three years ago, there have been myriad honours bestowed upon Leonard Cohen: concert tributes, museum exhibitions, movies, building murals and books. Streets, parks and libraries are also certain to pop up in Cohen’s hometown.

But on Sept. 20 in the Glass Court of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, one of the grandest and rarest honours to be bestowed upon any Canadian, in the arts or otherwise, will be unveiled: not one, but three Canada Post stamps featuring Cohen during different phases of his 60-year career as one of this country’s as well as one of the world’s foremost poet/troubadours.

It’s probably not a coincidence that the setting for the unveiling overlooks the giant Cohen mural on Crescent St.

The Cohen stamps will be available to the public on Sept. 21. Not entirely a coincidence, either, since Cohen would have turned 85 that day.

The stamps, which will be available in different price denominations, were created by three renowned designers, whose identities like the stamp images themselves will only be revealed at the Sept. 20 launch.

But Jim Phillips, Canada Post’s director of stamp services, does acknowledge there will be 4 million Cohen stamps hitting post offices on Sept. 21, and they will only be available for a two-year period.

These stamps will reach way, way beyond that with Cohen fans worldwide.”

“Unless they sell out faster, and we have every reason to expect they could. But once they’re gone, they’re gone — we won’t be reprinting them again,” Phillips says in a telephone interview from his Ottawa office. “It won’t just be stamp collectors purchasing them, either. These stamps will reach way, way beyond that with Cohen fans worldwide.”

The mandate of Canada Post’s Iconic Stamp Program is to celebrate our history and culture. But there have not been an inordinate number of cultural luminaries to be so honoured.

Late Montreal jazz great Oscar Peterson received his own to mark his 80th birthday, two years before he died in 2007. Canada Post also issued a series of stamps recognizing a host of different singer/composers like Robert Charlebois, Ginette Reno and Joni Mitchell.

On the sports front, Jean Béliveau and Gilles Villeneuve have had their likenesses emblazoned on stamps.

“But the Cohen stamp is one of the most significant we have ever issued,” Phillips says. “The larger-than-life stature of Leonard Cohen as a singer, songwriter and poet is not only Montreal or Canada. It’s worldwide.

“The Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame, the Junos, the Grammys … I mean this guy won a rock Grammy (posthumously) for You Want It Darker, which isn’t essentially rock but which is so powerful.”

Paying any sort of homage to an icon can take years and sometimes decades here. This tribute, taking place three years after Cohen’s death, is relatively lightning fast.

The stamp-honour process begins with suggestions from the public.

“We get hundreds of suggestions. In the case of Cohen, people started writing us right after he died. Even before that, we had so many suggesting that,” Phillips points out.

Canada Post has a research team responsible for putting together a 10-year plan for prospective stamps. Once it receives suggestions, Canada Post brings them to a stamp advisory committee of 12 from all walks of Canadian life. The committee then makes its recommendations to Canada Post.

The Cohen stamps got Canada Post’s seal of approval a year and a half ago. But before going ahead, it had to make sure the family and estate were on board, which they were.

“The Cohen stamps were approved of unanimously by our board of directors,” says Phillips, not surprisingly a huge Cohen fan. “There was no debate at all.

“Then we began working on detailed research with experts, archivists and the Cohen family and estate. Then we commissioned the designs from top Canadian designers. We then came back with the designs, working with the family hand and foot all the way along to make sure they are as classy as possible with lasting value.”

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An offshoot of this tribute is that Cohen would probably have gotten a kick out of the idea these stamps might encourage the use of more personal letter writing by pen over emails or texts. He certainly favoured that sort of communication himself.

There will be other special Canada Post stamps soon to be issued, but Phillips won’t talk about them at present: “I don’t think we should mention anyone in the same breath as Leonard now.”

Although Canada Post may have a decidedly dry image, the Crown corporation will be busting loose with a bash when the stamps become available to the public on Cohen’s birthday. Canada Post will be celebrating, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., at its downtown branch on 1974 Ste-Catherine St. W. with St-Viateur bagels, coffee, cake and prize packages. The stamp designers will be in attendance. And, natch, the music of Cohen will be playing and gently lifting us again.